Empowerly

Student profile

Successful students at Johns Hopkins make the biggest impact by collaborating with others, including peers, mentors, and professors. Talk about a time, in or outside the classroom, when you worked with others and what you learned from the experience.

I started the timer at 0:00. Immediately after, I swiftly pipetted the inhibitor into the reaction tube and handed it off to my partner, who scurried to the incubator and placed it inside. Every second was ticking. At 0:25, he reached the lab bench just in time for me to hand off the next tube and repeat the process.

My two colleagues and I were beginning an assay at a summer science program to determine the reversibility of our fungal M. oryzae phosphatase enzyme. If we made a mistake, it would mean restarting the day’s work entirely. Using a divide-and-conquer approach, we assigned one person to add the reactants, one person to run the tubes to the incubator, and one person to keep track of time. While all of our reactions were obeying the laws of science, my group was obeying only one law—Murphy’s Law. I added the wrong reactant, one of my partners accidentally dropped our reaction tubes, and my other partner lost track of time. After hours of setup and experimentation, our day in the lab seemed to amount to nothing.

Regrouping after dinner, we went over our procedure with a TA and the academic director to prevent similar misfortunes. A color-coded time table and new labelling method streamlined our successful second attempt of the assay. Exiting the lab past 12 AM, I reflected on how my group's initial failure could help us in the future.

It turns out, the failures I encountered with my group provided me with multiple lessons about collaboration. First, I learned that understanding how each individual copes with failure allows a group to assess how it might regroup and retry. Second, I realized that being sympathetic to each person’s needs was the only way any of our experiments succeeded. Hundreds of hours spent with thirty-four individuals also taught me that enormous tasks—from novel research, to a whistling choir, to an ultimate frisbee team—require a group of diverse skill sets. 

I foresee the wisdom gained from this experience aiding me not in just a lab setting, but also in the discussions and study sections I will be a part of at Johns Hopkins. To me, exploiting the breadth of intellect, opinion, and experience weaved together in a single team is ultimately the most effective way to tackle challenges of any nature.

WC: 389

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I started the timer at 0:00. Immediately after, I swiftly pipetted the inhibitor into the reaction tube and handed it off to my partner who briskly walked to the incubator and placed it inside. Every second was ticking. At 0:25, he returned to the lab bench just in time for me to hand off the next tube and repeat the process. 

One afternoon while attending a summer science program, my two colleagues and I began an assay to determine the reversibility of our fungal M. oryzae phosphatase enzyme. If a mistake was made, it would mean restarting the day’s work entirely. Using a divide-and-conquer approach, one person was assigned to add the reactants, one person to run the tubes to the incubator, and one person to keep track of time. While all of our reactions were obeying the laws of science, my group was obeying only one law — Murphy’s Law. I added the wrong reactant, one of my partners accidentally dropped our reaction tubes, and my other partner lost track of time. After hours of setup and experimentation, our day in the lab seemed to amount to nothing.

Regrouping after dinner, we went over our procedure with a TA and the academic director to prevent similar misfortune from occurring again. A color-coded time table and new labelling methods streamlined our successful second attempt of the assay. Exiting the lab past 12 AM, I reflected on how the failure my group experienced could help us in the future.

The failures I encountered with my group provided me with multiple lessons to be learned. Understanding how each individual copes with failure allows a group to assess how it might regroup and retry. Being sympathetic to each person’s needs and united through failure was the only way any of our experiments succeeded. Hundreds of hours spent with thirty-four individuals also taught me that enormous tasks from novel research to a whistling choir to an ultimate frisbee team require a group of diverse skill sets. Exploiting the breadth of thought, opinion, and experience weaved together in a single team is the most effective way to tackle both academic and recreational challenges. I foresee the wisdom gained from this experience aiding me not in just a lab setting, but also in discussion and study sections in college. Lastly,  respecting the reality failure results the majority of the time in scientific research taught me to embrace failure as a means of improvement.

WC: 409

Possible to Include: Sentence on the specific skills each one of us excelled at 

Brick of Barf

Start the time now! As we swiftly pipetted an inhibitor into our reaction tube, fast-walked to the incubator, and returned to the lab bench just in time to see the stopwatch read 30 seconds, indicating for us to repeat, we were in a high stress, high stakes situation. This past summer at a biochemistry summer science program, we had begun an experiment to test the reversibility of our fungal enzyme. The experiment would take hours to conduct and if a mistake was made, it would mean restarting the experiment entirely. We had set up two stopwatches running concurrently and a table to keep track of when to add each ingredient into the reaction. In our group of 3, each one of us had a job: one person to add the reactants, one person to run the tubes to the incubator, and one person to keep track of time. While I am sure that all of our reactions were obeying the laws of science, my group was obeying only one law — Murphy’s Law. I added the wrong reactant, inadvertently stopping the entire reaction, one of my partners accidentally dropped our reaction tubes, and my other partner lost track of time. After a few hours of setup and a few hours of experimentation, our entire day in the lab had amounted to nothing. Feeling demoralized and stressed, we had to come together as a team to assess what happened and how we could improve. I first went to the TA, our go-to mentors, to relay the unfortunate message about our experiment. Their advice to us was to double check all of our calculations with them so that when we repeated the experiment, we could ensure everything would go as smoothly as possible. Working together, I explained the mathematical calculations used to arrive at the concentrations of our reactants while my partners explained crafted a neat, color-coded, time table to keep us on track. I proposed a new labelling method of the test tubes in order to better identify each reaction. It seemed that we were ready to try for a second run. The most intimidating part was mustering up the courage to ask one of the academic directors to keep the labs open until 12AM in order to provide my group with ample time to complete our rerun. To our surprise, my group realized that almost half of the twelve groups in the program had failed in this experiment as well. Our academic directors had explained science in that you fail 90% of the time and that if you are lucky, you’ll succeed 10% of the time. It seemed that four weeks into the program, that statistic had finally caught up to us. Throughout this entire conundrum, I learned that regrouping with my teammates was necessary in order to improve our overall protocol and keep all group members on the same page. The receptiveness of the TA mentors to our concerns further strengthened my belief in the importance of asking for help when you need it. And throughout the entire 6 weeks of the program, I learned that it takes a team to ensure the success of a large situation. From the academic directors taught the necessary material, to the TAs who prepared the materials for our labs, to my teammates who made a seemingly daunting task far more manageable, I realized that the success of the program relied on all of us to do our task and depend on each other.